


Exercises In Free Love

by sweetestsight



Series: Exercises In Free Love [1]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, College, Fluff, M/M, does this analogy make sense anymore: the thrilling sequel, this metaphor is getting away from me: the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-11 20:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16860181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetestsight/pseuds/sweetestsight
Summary: Maybe self-reflection is a product of those quiet moments, or maybe it's just what happens when you fall in love with your three best friends. Four boys reflect on what they mean to each other, and maybe learn something about themselves along the way.





	1. Brian

They are, all four of them, spinning wildly out of control.

They turn dizzyingly, zipping through space endlessly, dragged at a hundred and seven kilometers an hour by an invisible force toward an unknown destination.

Well, not completely invisible. The gravity of an object can be determined by its mass and relative distance and by calculating the trajectory it’s more than easy to see where any one body is headed, and besides that the intricate web of push-pull that makes up the cosmos is more a map than a tangle for anyone dedicated enough to look. Complex maybe, but wholly understandable if you can dedicate the time and energy.

He has all his energy to dedicate to the web of his apartment. He just isn’t sure even that will get him anywhere.

Here are the paths of their orbits currently: Roger dozing on the couch after a drink too many the night before, occasionally sitting up to snap at Freddie for playing the piano too loud. Freddie, absently singing to himself and studiously ignoring Roger in favor of working on his most recent heart wrenching love ballad. John, nowhere to be seen since breakfast the previous day. Frowning, Brian shoots him a text.

_Are you alive somewhere?_

_Fine. Working. Back tonight._

The labs, then. It’s no wonder with finals coming so soon.

“Back, bring it back,” Freddie croons. “Please bring it back home to me—”

“If you don’t _shut up_ ,” Roger snaps, throwing a pillow in his direction, “I will move out, so help me—”

“Well maybe I’d have something else to do if you weren’t always fucking sleeping one off these days,” Freddie snaps back.

“Why don’t you try studying for a change?”

“Rich, coming from you!”

“Oh, don’t you fucking go there. You know damn well—”

“Do I? What do—”

“I’m going out,” Brian cuts in. “I’ve got class.”

Neither of them spare him a look as he leaves the apartment and heads outside. He shuts the door against the sound of their shouting.

It wasn’t like this always. It isn’t like this always. He knows it’s just what’s happening now—that Roger’s spiraling into his own pit of apathy as he loses interest in his degree and he’s lashing out because of it; that Freddie is more than willing to rise up to the challenge of a quarrel. He knows that just like he knows that John would be home more if he could, but as it is he’s thrown himself wholeheartedly into the challenges of school and left little time for the rest of them. And that leaves Brian, drifting off into his own realm where none of them seem able to follow.

What pulls them back to the middle? Love?

Is that really enough?

The thought isn’t his own; it’s intrusive and unbidden and he throws it mercilessly out of his mind. It’s always been enough before. No matter what happens, that always pulls them back together. They love each other.

Will it be enough again? When is the breaking point, when they’re so far away from each other nothing will draw them back together? When do they fall out of orbit?

It nags him throughout the day. It lingers with him in class, forces its way into his calculations and needles him like an itch he can’t quite scratch. It haunts him. He reads numbers and solves problems, but he sees the ever-rotating cycle of the four of them, the places where they all fall apart. He can’t solve the equation. He doesn’t know how.

He stops in the Engineering building on the way home and paces the halls to the labs. It’s a familiar path. He remembers chasing Roger this way as they searched for the right room; remembers Freddie looking around skeptically the first time he’d visited; remembers following John, guitar in hand as they went to nitpick a finicky circuit or test out a new amp. The warmth of the memories barely touches him.

He peers through the window on the door but he can barely see inside.

“Can I help you?”

There’s a girl behind him, eyeing him skeptically. “Could you swipe me in?” he asks her.

“You’re not an engineer.”

“Astrophysics. I’m looking for my boyfriend.”

She scoffs, digging through her bag. “He isn’t here.”

“Are you sure? His name’s John. He’s a junior. Brown hair, a few inches taller than you—”

“John Deacon?” she asks skeptically.

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t know he had a boyfriend,” she mutters, and Brian’s mouth tastes suddenly bitter. She flattens her ID against the panel and the door pops open with a click. “Go ahead.”

He shoots her a small smile that lacks any actual happiness before opening the door and stepping through. The room is mostly deserted but there’s a light on above a workbench in the back, and there’s John’s head craned low as he picks apart a mess of circuits in front of him. He barely notices Brian’s approach until Brian pointedly sets his hands on the table, and then he starts and tugs his headphones off.

“Brian. How’d you get in?”

“Someone let me in.” He looks him over quickly: dark circles, yesterday’s clothes, flat hair, bitten lips and the trademarked glazed eyes of someone who’s worked too hard to remember to eat. “I thought you were going home.”

“Yeah, in a little while. Didn’t you get my text?”

“That was three hours ago, John,” he says.

He gets a look that’s equal parts defiant and desperate. “My exam is at six.”

“You need to eat something and get some rest.”

“I need to finish this.”

“John,” he starts, but John cuts him off.

“Brian, I love you but I need to get this done. Thank you for checking in on me but I can look after myself, alright?”

“You’re not, though.”

“This is more important,” he says, half-crazed as he turns back to his circuits. He works for another minute, and when Brian doesn’t move adds, “Now unless you’re going to help me solder all this down could you kindly fuck off, please? I’ll see you later.”

His breath catches. John has always been prone to speak before thinking. Freddie’s said as much to him when he retreats after a fight. _He doesn’t mean it, dear. Sometimes he doesn’t realize what he’s saying, that’s all. You know he’ll be terribly sorry later._ But Freddie isn’t here now, he’s off screaming at Roger about god knows what. And John doesn’t look at him again, tuning back into his own little word where none of them exist. He waits a minute longer to see if he’ll realize that Brian feels seconds away from breaking down, but when he doesn’t Brian has nothing to do but retreat a few paces before leaving the workshop entirely.

He wanders aimlessly until he’s back in the physics building, then wanders through there until he reaches his favorite corner to study in, then feels his eyes prickle when he realizes they know he goes there frequently, so he climbs the stairs to the next floor until he finds somewhere he’s never been and makes a seat for himself by the window. He opens his notebook and flips to the first problem set.

F = (G x m1 x m2) / r2

The force of gravity, the thing holding the fabric of the universe together, the thing tying them down, shifting with relative distance and mass.

What is the gravitational force between the four of them? Multiply the universal gravitational constant by the weight of John’s cold anger, Freddie’s unbridled pride and Roger’s apathy at everything around them. Throw in Brian’s own self-doubt and neediness, too. Then divide it by the distance between all four of them, squared. What did you come up with? Did you come up with zero? Is there nothing holding them together whatsoever?

How does all that add up?

His phone rings, and when he glances at the screen Freddie’s face is smiling back at him. He flips it over and doesn’t answer.

Time passes, then. Six o’clock comes and goes. He imagines John’s shadow dragging itself off to sit its exams, then wonders if Freddie and Roger have strangled each other yet, then pushes thoughts of them out of his mind and does his best to focus on his work for another few hours. Just a little longer, and maybe he’ll come home to an empty flat. Maybe they’ll all finally have pushed each other away and he won’t have to at any of them with red eyes that give too much away.

What does it take for gravitational force to be negative? How long before all four of them repel each other rather than drag each other closer? Has it already happened?

He should’ve studied magnetism instead. Then maybe he’d understand.

He manages to wait until eleven and prays to himself that that was long enough. His phone is long-since dead, homework long-since done. He’s tired of working and worrying. God, is he tired.

He trudges home as snow starts to fall and then quickens it to a march as he feels his fingers start to go numb, and by the time he gets into the building they feel ready to fall off. He opens the door quickly and then remembers and steps inside as quietly as he can, but everything is quiet.

The light is on in the entryway and it smells homey and warm like someone was cooking. The kitchen is spotless but one of them left a plate of food for him wrapped up in the fridge. The gesture sends a pang through his chest which he does his best to ignore. He microwaves it and then demolishes it in five minutes flat when his stomach reminds him he hasn’t eaten since that morning. It doesn’t stop him from appreciating it, anyway. He recognizes his lovers’ joint work at cooking anywhere: Freddie’s fascination with obscure canned sauces, Roger’s determination to add cheese to them, John quietly forcing a vegetable onto everyone’s plate. That’s nice, at least. Maybe they’ve all made up.

He eyes the closed door to the bedroom at the end of the hall and realizes with sudden clarity that he isn’t ready to face them. If they haven’t he’ll open it to an empty bed as the three of them gallavant to god-knows-where in the middle of the night. If they have they’ll be peacefully intwined after a quiet night in, and he’ll be left trying to find where he fits between their spaces.

He sets his telescope up by the window instead and watches the moon make its way across the sky.

The moon always spins that way, steady as a hammer in its orbit. What did the earth do to get it to stay?

“Brian.”

He turns around. He feels guilty like he’s been caught in a nefarious act for some reason. He shouldn’t. It’s just Roger. “What?” he whispers.

Roger swallows. “Come to bed.”

“In a minute,” he tries.

His eyes are as big as the moon in the dark, skin glowing as he pads closer and crosses his arms over his bare chest to ward off the chill. “We missed you tonight.”

“You have a funny way of showing it,” he mutters.

“I’m sorry. I know things haven’t been easy recently but they’ll get better. All four of us, we’ll get there. We just need to stick together.”

“I’m not really tired, Roger,” he says.

“Bullshit. It’s nearly one.”

Brian gives him a long suffering look and he lets out a gusty sigh before stepping forward, plastering himself against Brian’s back and hanging off of him. “Fine then. If you’re not coming I’ll just sleep like this.”

Brian cranes his neck to look at him. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not. It’s this or we get some actual sleep. Make your choice.”

He considers that for a moment, but he knows there’s no shaking him once Roger has an idea in his head. He’s testament to that now, slowly letting more and more of his weight lean on Brian until he’s about to stagger forward with it. “Fine,” he relents finally. “Fine. Let’s go to bed.”

Roger sends him a tiny satisfied smile, dimples and all as he tugs him toward the bedroom by his wrist. He lets go halfway to gently start on the buttons of Brian’s shirt, working efficiently so that by the time he gets to their room he’s tugging it down his arms and off his shoulders with careful hands. There’s something domestic about being taken care of like this, something that he’s sorely missed these last few days that they’ve all been so out of sync. He does his best to muffle his sniffle as Roger pushes him lightly to sit on the edge of the bed before tugging his pants off so he’s sitting there in just his underwear.

“Brian?” Freddie murmurs somewhere behind him. “Oh, come here.”

He crawls over the lump he’s guessing is John to lay in the warm spot beside Freddie. A hand runs through his hair and then Freddie’s pulling him closer until their faces are inches apart in the darkness.

“Are you alright?”

He is; he’ll be fine. The sheets are soft beneath him, warm and familiar with the smells of all of them. This is his home. “I’m alright,” he says softly, and Freddie’s fingers rub against his scalp again.

“I tried to find you but you weren’t in any of your usual spots. We were going to have a night in.”

“Didn’t you have one?”

“It isn’t the same without all four of us,” he replies.

“I’m sorry. My phone died and I had work to finish up.”

That makes Freddie sigh. “You don’t need to retreat like that next time. We’re here if you want to talk about any of it, Brian. We’ll always be here.”

“I know.” He swallows a lump in his throat. “It’s just, I don’t want to bug you guys with it if you’re busy. I can work through it on my own.”

“You don’t have to. We want to help. You don’t need to hide from us.”

“Sometimes I feel like I do,” he admits.

“That’s okay,” Roger chimes in from behind him. “We’ll always be here to drag you back, won’t we?”

Like gravity; drag him back into orbit where the four of them circle each other so well, spinning round and round in perfect synchronism, counting beats with the way they pass each other. They’re a perfectly balanced system, holding each other in place through all the chaos.

He’s snapped out of his thoughts as Roger tries to climb over him and John in one fell swoop, nearly toppling onto Freddie before Brian catches his waist. “He’s always stealing my spot,” Roger tells him. “Look at this.”

“That’s what you get for getting up,” Freddie supplies.

Roger huffs and squeezes between them, scooting down until only the top of his head is visible above the duvet and his breath is tickling Brian’s chest. He’s the perfect fit between them, a sentence between their parentheses. And then there’s—

“Brian?”

John’s voice turns low and rumbly when he’s just woken up. He burns like a furnace when he’s sleeping, too. He’s burning right now, attaching himself to Brian’s back and piling his pillow onto the edge of Brian’s own so they’re practically cheek to cheek. Brian feels his arm curl around his chest but then Roger’s grabbing it before he can and curling somehow closer, and then Freddie’s trying to move even closer to him and it’s times like these when Brian wonders why they even bothered getting rid of their full-sized bed when he has no doubt they could’ve all fit on it without a problem.

“I’m sorry for earlier,” John says, and now Brian can feel the rumble in his own chest. That’s nice. “I’m sorry I snapped. I was tired and stressed but that’s no excuse.”

“It’s alright,” he whispers so his voice doesn’t crack. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

“It’s not alright. You didn’t deserve that. We’ve all been such a mess recently and I shouldn’t have pushed you away when you were just reaching out.”

“John, it doesn’t matter,” he says, and then realizes with a breathless little laugh that it really _doesn’t_. This is all that matters: the four of them wrapped around each other at the end of the day, reigning in each other’s moods and whimsies until only sleepy contentment is left. “It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it.”

He’s silent for a minute, then Brian feels his lips against his shoulder. “I’ll make it up to you. Tomorrow morning, after we’ve all gotten some sleep.” He nestles closer, and Brian can feel their hair tangling together. Roger lets out a breath against his chest and Freddie curls over him a little further until his face is a scant few inches from Brian’s again. “I don’t know where we’d be without you,” he mumbles, and then his breathing grows even with sleep.

He turns that over in his head as he feels sleep drag him under. Foolish of him not to count that into all his calculations and figures—that he’s dangerously close to spiraling out of orbit, but so are the rest of them. Odd that he can tug them back together, too. Odd that any of them can. Maybe he should revisit that equation.

Take the mass of Freddie’s passion, of Roger’s optimism, of John’s quiet perceptiveness, of Brian’s own affection. Multiply them with the universal constant: them, entangled at the end of each day, content and together. Divide it by the distance between them, if there even is one. A scant few molecules, maybe. Words of love hovering in the air until they can be voiced in the morning.

What is the net force of love? They drive each other apart and yet they snap right back into orbit. No, not even that. They collide into each other in an endless quest to become a single entity, traveling the galaxy together.

Science could conclude that the force is infinite and immeasurable.

When do they fall out of orbit?

When the sun falls out of the sky. When the galaxy stops spinning and the stars in all their fiery glory go cold and dark. As long as they live they’ll draw nearer; as long as he breathes Brian will always be tugging them closer, and feeling their pull in return.

That’s love.

With that last thought he succumbs to sleep, warm between his lovers. Outside the window the moon silently finishes her slow journey across the sky, dipping toward the horizon in preparation for a new day to dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had some feelings so I just sat down and wrote this, so if you see any glaring errors just let me know. Unless it's my maths. Please don't check my maths. Sorry for the angst but I hope it all worked out for everyone! I’m tossing around more soft flowery metaphors for our other boys, too. If you enjoyed this rant and want to see more please let me know what you think. I love feedback/criticism/any thoughts you might have on stuff like this!


	2. John

 

 

It’s a special cocktail of cortisol and adrenaline that keeps him focused during finals week—or that’s what Roger would tell him, ever familiar with the inner workings of sleepless nights. When it finally wears off it leaves time blurry and unfocused and the sun just a bit too bright. His brain is a mess of capacitors and resistors and potentiometers and wires, and between it all memories and half-formed thoughts weave warm and sweet like ribbons of honey in the sun, falling slowly wherever they please. He watches them flit across his eyelids as they come and go and sinks deeper into his pillows, content to ride the line between sleep and wakefulness for just a little bit longer.

 

They’d met in the autumn of his freshman year in a required lit class (“shitty core bullshit,” as Roger called it mutinously,) Roger old for their year where he was young, seen as infinitely cool for it despite it being the product of a year he was held back (“cause of shitty core bullshit,” he supplies helpfully over a cup of tea) and from the second they meet (“Roger Meddows Taylor,” big glittery eyes and a charmingly small mouth) the rhythm of him works its way into his fingertips and resolutely refuses to leave. To him Roger is something darling; the brilliant light of a diode as the current flashes through it in the first simple circuit he ever builds, maybe. Lovely.

John wonders if he knows the exquisite torture that comes with being in love with your best friend. He catches blue eyes lingering a beat too long on his lips sometimes and thinks maybe he might.

Then he meets Roger’s friends and realizes it’s probably a better question for them.

(“They’d love to meet you,” Roger says, laying on the floor. His shirt is long gone and sweat is beading on his chest, still heaving as he catches his breath. John cranes his neck to meet his eyes where he’s laying inches away beside him, their heads close enough that he can count his eyelashes and the individual golden hairs sticking to his forehead. He has the urge to brush them away, to lean over and see if his mouth is as fiery hot as the rest of him, and then he catches himself and watches Roger’s hands as he wraps his bleeding fingers in tape instead.

“Why’d they want that?” he asks, nervously tracing the familiar shape of the body of his bass where it rests against his stomach.

“They’ve wanted to for a while,” comes the answer. “I never stop talking about you.”

Does he know how that sounds?

His eyes catch on John’s mouth when he bites his lip thoughtfully. Surely he knows how that sounds. Surely he knows how this looks.

He nods in acquiescence anyway and watches Roger shine brilliantly for it, perfect diode in a simple circuit. And then he takes John to meet his friends.)

And it starts to make sense.

He can’t blame them for being in love with him, is the thing. Lord knows he loves him too, so much he’s sure everyone and their mother knows about it. And he thought maybe, hopefully, miraculously, that Roger might love him back.

He meets Brian and Freddie and the whole thing comes into brilliant daylight, wires and chips and relays all exposed to the world: Roger loves all three of them and they love him terribly in return but here, locked in this ridiculous struggle, they’ve found themselves in love with each other as well and to choose one lover would be to lose the other two; to power one pathway would be to lose the rest. It all falls into place, each component perfectly balancing its counterparts to the point he’s drunk on it. It’s a tangled puzzle of perfectly complimentary pieces that aren’t quite slotting together.

Brian is quiet and carefully posh in the beginning to the point that John isn’t even sure how he and Roger have been friends so long. He handles John with white gloves, always precise and polite and never emotional in any sense of the word. At first John doesn’t know what to make of it, and he handles Brian’s crisp disagreements and arguments with a stunned sort of silence until finally, one day, he gets brave enough to call him on his bullshit.

It’s different from falling in love with Roger but at the same time exactly the same: love at first sight but then anger second, and it’s so dizzying he doesn’t even know what to feel. It’s a shock to his system and everything is fizzling and popping and he has no idea how to stop it. He loves his eyes but can’t meet them; loves his voice but can’t bear his words half the time; wants to run his fingers through his hair so badly he nearly rips out all of his own. It’s a visceral thing, a fuse that’s in a perpetual state of overload. He spends two weeks pushing all his buttons before he realizes it’s just serving to hit all his own instead, watching him get flushed with anger and being torn between hitting and kissing him.

Falling in love with Brian hurts the way electricity hurts, fizzling through his skin to his very core and leaving him with the feeling that he is now alive in a way he wasn’t before. He wants to lick the wound as much as he wants to do it again, feel it surging through him like a living thing.

But then there are days when they sit in a silence that could almost be described as companionable and bask in the mutual appreciation for soothing quiet and hard work while John tries to come up with an elegant way to broach the topic of _hey, you know that thing where we fight sometimes? That really pisses me off and also makes me want to fuck you on the floor until we both lose all coherency._ Roger enters the room in a clamor and flops into the too-small space between them, pressed against them both and complaining loudly about his evening class as John tries valiantly to chase his earlier thoughts away.

“Will one of you rub my back?”

“No,” they both answer resolutely.

“Why not?” Roger whines, looking at them with innocently glittering eyes. “Don’t you love me?”

And they both avoid his eyes, cheeks flaming. He knows, the little shit. It may be the issue neither of them ever discuss—John too shy and Brian too wary—but Roger shares no such obligations.

Neither does Freddie.

Freddie shakes his hand for one beat too long when they first meet. When John blushes and stumbles out a greeting he only gets warmer toward him, tactile in a careful sort of way and always a shade quieter than he is with the others. It’s like he’s talking to a small animal or something, and John would normally be offended—but then Freddie’s voice gets so musical at that volume and he always leans just a shade closer so John can hear him, and none of those things add up to something bad. Freddie smells very nice, and his words are very sweet— _oh darling_ and _John, dear_ and _aren’t you lovely?_

How easy was it to fall in love with him? As easy as flicking a switch. As easy as turning the light on and illuminating the world.

“Glad to see you two are getting along,” Roger says in mock derision as he enters the apartment that Brian and Freddie shared in those early days only to find John already sitting at the breakfast table, invited this time by Freddie himself rather than as a tag-along with Roger.

“Come now, Roger,” Freddie says in his airiest and most debonair tone. “John and I are wonderful friends. I wouldn’t expect you to understand, nor would I expect you to be the jealous type.”

“Jealous?” Roger gasps in mock affront, hand to his chest. “What? I hope you’re not implying that I have something to be jealous of!”

“Did I say that?”

“You didn’t have to! All the signs are there! I know that he’s—that he’s _cheating on me!”_

 _I wish,_ John thinks to himself sullenly, taking a sip of tea. _I wish you were mine to cheat on. I wish I could land him, too. I wish I could have you both._

Freddie looks to John, fighting to hide his grin. “Well, darling, the truth is—”

“I’m pregnant,” John deadpans. “It’s his.”

Brian comes out of his room, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, to the sight of Roger seated dramatically in John’s lap, clinging desperately to his shoulders as he fake-sobs. He almost does a good job of looking away from the two of them to hide his very real, not at all theatrical jealousy. John does a frankly terrible job at pretending having Roger in his lap isn’t getting to him and that his eyes want nothing more than to follow the lines of Brian’s back as he huffs a sigh and bends down to dig through the fridge.  

“We’re out of milk,” he announces to no one in particular.

“We’ll go to the store later,” Freddie says lazily. “As soon as we get the paternity test filed away.”

That’s the final piece of his circuit that’s been missing, though. He could have all three of them. They, all four of them, could have each other. It’s a complex mess of wires but somehow it’s stable; somehow it works. Even when it’s breaking it’s electrifying.

And it breaks easily and often, or rather its individual parts do. Roger, prone to bouts of anger, sputters and fizzles until he eventually burns out in a glorious shower of sparks. He erupts; he screams and destroys anything nearby and utterly wears himself out. When it finally happens he collapses, hoarse and raw, and allows Freddie to scoop him into his arms.

Freddie, struck at random with melancholy that nobody can rid him of except with random soft touches throughout the day as a reminder of their love, spirals until eventually Brian simply plants himself in his space with all his quiet melancholy that remains unspoken and unacknowledged until moments like these come along; moments when he’s the only one who can really begin to _get it_.

Brian, always craning his neck to look up at the skies, occasionally forgets to look down until he’s realized belatedly that he’s drifted off and needs someone to pin him to earth once more. And that’s John’s job: holding him down, reminding him how to feel and taste and take, watching as he realizes he doesn’t need to be in control all the time and then giving it up like an offering. He cherishes it, cradles it and never takes it for granted, and when he finally cedes it Brian just uses it to hold him closer.

And John himself. He breaks, too.

He snaps, more often. He explodes. When his fuse burns it singes everything around him, including the three people he loves more than anything.

He finally allows his eyes to drift open and takes in the state of the room: walls illuminated in gold, the light still faint and dim, the cadences of three sleepy people the only thing he can hear.

Well, two sleepy people. At some point Brian rolled onto his back, and John’s head is resting soundly on his shoulder. Roger seems to have claimed the other side of his chest, still trapped in the bracket of Freddie’s arms, and when John stirs blue eyes flick up to his.

“Hey,” he rasps, voice rough from disuse. “Better?”

“Better, yeah.” He does feel better. Maybe a bit drunk on sleep, but miles improved. “You?”

“I’ve been good.”

“Yeah?”

Roger gives him his best approximation of a glare this early in the morning, then relents almost immediately. “It’s fine. I’m getting shit done.”

“Good.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“That’s alright.” And it is. He doesn’t have to. Roger’s been distant lately, but then so has he. They’ve been on opposite wavelengths, opposite polarities. They haven’t been quite matching up, and the whole connection is corroded and burned out because of it. Of course Freddie’s exhausted by them both—passionate and unable to compete with Roger’s lackluster motivation and John’s wholehearted dedication to his studies, he’s sparking and sputtering in the middle of it.

And then there’s Brian—Brian who craves the energy of them all together, Brian who needs the quiet hum of them all working together even if it blows up in their faces occasionally. Of course he’s suffering for all of it. Of course he’s feeling low.

They all are.

Because they need that for the entire circuit to operate. They need the physical proximity of all their working parts—that close, sharp connection that throws everything into perspective and makes it all tick. Apart they can reach each other, but it’s so much harder. It’s so unnecessarily difficult.

“Are you going to wake him?” Roger whispers, eyes flicking pointedly to Brian’s sleeping face. He looks content, face slack and head turned to one side so his nose is resting in John’s hair. One arm is around his shoulders, warm and heavy. The other is sprawled out to pillow Freddie’s head where it rests inches from Roger’s own.

John strains to press a kiss to Brian’s cheek and gets a sleepy sigh and a mumble for his efforts. He’s dead to the world, worn out by the odd detachment that’s come with the last few days to the point even a nose against the sensitive spot under his jaw barely makes him stir. John looks to Roger to find him already smiling fondly back. “Best let him sleep,” John whispers.

“Good luck getting out of that.”

John sends him a long suffering look and carefully reaches up to remove his arm before sliding out of bed. He has it easy, being on the edge. Roger has a significantly harder time extracting himself from Freddie’s arms and then climbing carefully over Brian’s sleeping body; he’s almost home free when two brown eyes blink open in mock affront.

“Whergo,” Freddie states coherently.

John bites down on a smile. “We’re getting a head start to breakfast.”

That earns him a sleepy glare. “You promised to make it up to us,” he rasps, raising his eyebrows pointedly.

“There’ll be time later. We have all day. It’s better you two get a few more hours.”

“He never can sleep alone, can he?” he asks, scooting closer to Brian.

“Like you’re any better,” Roger replies with a quiet laugh.

John smiles to himself. The last thing he sees before he leaves the room is the two of them wrapped up in each other, just as they should be.

Breakfast is easy: homey food thrown into a pan, potatoes and herbs and what few vegetables they have laying around, a couple of eggs left out on the side for the moment when their calmer, sweeter half finally make it out of bed. Only then does John relax into the one person who can fix his broken connection, the missing part to their perfect circuit.

He rounds the island to the stool on which Roger is sitting, watching him sleepily with a cup of tea half-finished in front of him and a blanket draped around his shoulders. He presses his nose into the back of his neck and then moves to rest his cheek on his shoulder instead, holding him close and feeling Roger lace their fingers together. Because they all have a backup in place for when they falter and fail, and of course Roger is John’s; Roger who he loved first, Roger who understands the horrible guilt that comes with the rush of anger and who would never blame him for things he doesn’t mean. Roger who can easily handle the sharp edges he worries he’ll cut Freddie and Brian with all too easily, who can dull them carefully and put them away.

“It’s alright,” Roger whispers to him.

John doesn’t say anything but pokes the cold tip of his nose into the warmth of Roger’s neck.

“He doesn’t hold it against you. He’s not that delicate, John.”

“It’s not just him,” he says into his neck. “It’s—I should have been here this week. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Roger hums. “You were busy.”

“Yeah, and look where it got me.”

“Perfect scores on your exams?”

“And pushing you all away. Snapping at the people I love. He didn’t need that on top of everything.”

“Everything?”

“Not just us.” Roger pulls back to look at him and he meets his eyes. “Brian and Freddie, too. All four of us have been off recently.”

Roger blinks at him. “We’ll get better.”

“How?”

“Like this,” he says, squeezing John’s hands. “Like what they’re doing right now. We haven’t all been together in a few days, but we’ll be alright. We always are.”

John sighs against his neck, and he feels Roger nose at the top of his head.

“We fight, John. It’s what the four of us do. It’s okay. We always fix it.”

They do; they always make it through to the other side. The two of them are testament to that, the hair trigger powerhouse to this system currently curled around each other like bunnies in the middle of the kitchen. So are Freddie and Brian, still asleep in bed and resting happily despite all their melancholy musings about the difficulties of love. John thought he’d found his missing piece when he’d met Roger, but in fact he’d found three of them. The never-ending circuit of giving and taking and loving can function only when all four of them take part.

He knows better than to take himself out of the equation again. He knows better than to disappear on them or prevent them from communicating. His section of the circuit won’t fail—it can’t as long as they’re all together.

For now he holds Roger close and listens to the content quiet of the apartment as they all bask in each other’s space.  He feels that thrum of electricity start up in his chest again, feels it stir in Roger’s skin as he brushes a hand across his stomach and graces his lips against his throat. For now he thrives on connections slowly resealing themselves, and only then does he allow himself to believe what he’s always known—that it will all be okay.

“I love you,” he whispers.

Roger just smiles and pulls him closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here are some soft feels for all you softies. Written when I was supposed to be writing my stupid final paper I don't care about. Can you tell I'm channeling that a little?
> 
> Comments make me cry like Joe Mazzello in every film he's ever been a part of. I love comments. I live off them. Please let me know what ya thinkin'.


	3. Roger

Roger knows bodies.

Not just like _that._ He’s studying biology too, for fuck’s sake. People always think the worst of him in that way, that all he does is drink and fuck and pretend to be interested in class. He may not be in love with his degree but he pays attention. Some small part of his brain is even still fascinated by the lessons and the future they might bring him. So no, he may not be the most passionate but he listens. He learns. He knows a hell of a lot about biology, thank you very much.

And he knows bodies.

That’s why he knows that when your lungs fail to operate you need to force some air back into them. Make them gasp and fill and absorb their share of oxygen and let it rush through the blood. Send them back into their perfect rhythm.

He turns around and catches John’s bottom lip between his own. He cradles his neck and drags him closer and then proceeds to kiss him as thoroughly as he can possibly manage with his head twisted to reach him over his shoulder—bites down on his lip and feels him inhale against his cheek, surprised and a little bit dizzy. There’s the rush of breath and then John is surging forward too, needy and eager yet carefully restrained as if he’s still trying to figure out what exactly he did to deserve such treatment and what he can do to get more of it.

That’s how you restart someone’s lungs.

When he pulls away John’s looking at him with so many feelings at once Roger isn’t even sure how to parse them—love and shock and delight and some silly little part of him that’s still trying to make himself feel guilty and is very disturbed that the emotion just isn’t coming. “Okay?” Roger asks simply, and John nods.

Silly boys, always trying to make things more difficult than they are.

He’ll never understand the three of them for that—their need to make the whole tangle of all of them more complicated than it needs to be. It’s simple to him, as simple as anything else. As simple as the first rhythm he’d ever learned to play on his shitty old kit, one-two-rest-and-two, as simple as a heartbeat. Easy.

He’d told them as much, even if by accident.

(It had been some night out after finals at a shitty bar Freddie had found but the beer was cheap at least, and Brian and Freddie were in a booth across the room pressed scandalously close together as they talked, close in a way that made something curl hot in Roger’s chest. It’s some sort of a combination of jealousy and desire that he couldn’t quite parse and didn’t particularly want to attempt understanding when his head was heavy and spinning lightly from alcohol.

He’d looked away then, searched for his third darling-best-friend in the depths of the bar and found him seated in a similar way with a beautiful blond at the counter. She’s gorgeous, tall and curvy and lovely and her smile is catching the eye of half the people around her but she only has eyes for _his_ friend, _his_ lovely John who’s barely old enough to even be in the place. She leans close to whisper something into his ear and he laughs, eyes crinkling and tooth gap on full display.

Roger’s blood boils.

He doesn’t even know why he’s like this, half the time. Maybe he has a problem. There’s no real reason why he should be this angry over it. John’s getting hitched with some beautiful blond thing. So what?

_I could be her, if you wanted,_ a traitorous voice whispers. _I’d do you so much better than she can._

But John doesn’t want that.

The two of them get up from the bar quickly, her hand brushing the bare skin of his arm below the edge of his t-shirt. They make a beeline for the bathroom, heads bent low to hear each other over the chatter of the bar.

Roger doesn’t watch them go in. He’s gone before he can.

He can’t quite breath right and he shoves the side door open harder than it probably needs to be pushed. It hits the cinderblock of the walls loudly as he rushes out into the narrow alley between two buildings. He doesn’t stop, just walks right up to the wall opposite the door and presses both palms to it. When the cold isn’t enough he slaps one down hard and feels pain bloom through his palm. That’s better.

He can’t think, though. He can’t think past the last sight he got of the two of them and Jesus Christ, John is going to lose his virginity to some bitch he doesn’t even know in a shitty bar in Kensington and he’s going to _sit outside while it fucking happens_ —

An empty beer bottle goes flying down the alley as he lets out a shout.

The door behind him swings open. “Roger?”

He turns and it’s Brian, eyes gentle as he watches him, stepping out into the alley and closing the door behind himself. It’s too much. He doesn’t need the gentleness of him right now, and he half-snarls as he snaps, “What?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Fucking go back to Freddie, Brian.”

“What happened?”

“You saw!” he snaps. “John?”

That has Brian’s attention, now. His eyes widen slightly in interest. “What?”

“He’s got some—some blond bitch in the bathroom with him!”

“Deaky?”

“Yes! That’s what I fucking said! Aren’t you listening?”

Brian’s jaw ticks. “Rog,” he says levelly. “You can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“You know what.”

“I fucking don’t,” he spits. “Tell me exactly what the fuck I’m not supposed to be doing.”

“You can’t keep stringing him on!” he snaps, anger finally rearing its head. “Don’t you get that? If you want him so badly then you need to tell him or else forget about him and find someone else!”

“I can’t!” Roger yells.

“Why not?”

There’s another bottle on the ground. Roger kicks it viciously and watches it clatter across the pavement before exploding against the wall twenty feet away.

“Stop it,” Brian hisses. “You—you fucking child, cut it out.”

“Fuck you,” he snaps, and swings at the wall again. When Brian tries to catch his hand he wrenches it away.

“Tell him you love him or else we’re done,” Brian snaps. “All four of us. You’re going to destroy everything, don’t you get that? It’ll ruin you, and that’ll ruin him. You need to tell him.”

“I’m not telling him! Would you leave it?”

“Why not?”

“You know why,” he says, and he does his damnest to make his tone forceful but it comes out a shade whinier than he’d like. He feels tears prick at his eyes and can’t even tell anymore if they’re from anger or despair.

“Tell me why,” Brian says, but now his tone is soft and his eyes are soft and Roger can’t do it. He can deal with his anger, but he can’t deal with him when he’s gentle.

He takes a deep breath, ready to retort loud and mean and rash. That’ll make him storm inside the bar again and he’ll be hurt by it for a little while, but Freddie will be there to comfort him like he always is and then Roger will be alone again to wallow. It’ll put a wrench in their friendship but it’ll be better than this: listening to the man he’s in love with tell him he needs to confess his feelings to another and tie this whole thing up in knots of need and exclusivity. It’s better like this—better they’re hurt, better they’re angry. It’s healthier for all four of them.

The door swings open.

Wide grey eyes meet his. “Roger?” John asks quietly.

Freddie’s head pokes out of the doorway behind him, and then he’s hurrying over in a flurry of furs and scarves and sparkles. “Roger, dear,” he chides, laying a hand on Roger’s shoulder. Roger throws him off, and he tuts quietly.

“Where’s your friend?” Roger asks John coldly instead.

John blinks. “Hanna? I was just buying. She didn’t want to stick around after.”

“You’re not serious,” Roger mutters, an incredulous little laugh bubbling up through his lungs. “Buying? Really?”

“Yeah,” John says slowly.

“If you want to lose your v-card that bad you don’t need to hire a fucking hooker to do it, Deacon,” he gets out. The thought alone makes him want to drown himself. Or throw up. He might do both before the night is over.

John stares at him blankly. “Is that why you’re so mad?”

“John,” Freddie starts.

“You think I— _what?_ ”

Roger can feel his core temperature cool suddenly, heart slowing, blood pressure lowering gradually. This is—oh. He’s made a mistake, hasn’t he?

“Roger,” John says, tone saccharine sweet and patronizing. “Hanna is our dealer. You know Hanna. She sells you weed.”

Oh.

He slides down the wall to sit on the cold sidewalk.

“He’s never met Hanna,” Freddie supplies helpfully, crouching down next to Roger. His voice sounds far off like he’s underwater. When he lays a hand on Roger’s shoulder this time Roger doesn’t shake him off. “You’re the one that usually meets her, John.”

John didn’t fuck her.

“He’s heard of her by now, surely,” Brian reasons.

He didn’t lose his virginity in a bar bathroom. Not that Roger cares much about virginity as a symbol of purity or whatever, it’s just, John should be with someone who would take care of him.

“I don’t know,” Freddie says doubtfully.

It doesn’t even matter that it’s his first time or whatever. Every time should be special for him. The first time and then every time after that. Every time should be an act of love, of _worship_. That’s what he deserves.

“I talk about her all the time, Fred,” John replies.

“Well, to _me._ Roger just smokes the shit.”

The world is coming back into focus slowly: Freddie’s hand on his shoulder, the quiet crispness of John’s voice, Brian’s warm eyes still trained on him. The pavement is very cold beneath him. It’s starting to snow.

He’s very tired.

John looks at him with something entirely unreadable but hesitantly gentle in his eyes, and Freddie’s grip tightens.)

He doesn’t like to think about all that very much, though—all the pointless misunderstandings and ridiculous fights. It isn’t like they’re few and far between. It’s not like they aren’t what makes the four of them work so well, either—not their ability to pick fights with one another when they’re all at their lowest, but their ability to overcome it.

Still, though. He doesn’t like to think about it. What came after is much better, anyway.

He focuses instead on the warmth of John’s wiry arms wrapped around his middle, bare skin warm against the cold of the kitchen. He focuses instead on the light filtering in through the blinds, sun brilliant against the snow even this early in the morning.

“What do you want to do for our anniversary?” he whispers, and he feels the warm puff of air as John snorts against his neck.

“It’s still a month away,” he murmurs back wryly.

Roger feels himself smile. “Christmas, then. That’s coming up, right?”

“Right,” John hums, pulling him somehow closer while he thinks. He only speaks again once Roger laces their fingers together. “I suppose it is. After we come back home we’ll figure it out.”

Coming home. Roger likes the sound of that. Coming home from their families to their apartment that’s barely big enough to fit four people and that’s always a shade too cold since they’re trying to save money on heating. Home, in all its perfect rundown dysfunctional glory.

“We should stay in,” John sighs. “Just the four of us. No class or anything. Nothing to worry about.”

He’s close enough that Roger feels the rise and fall of his chest as if its his own. He subconsciously matches it and then marvels as he feels them breathe in sync. They’re just one body like this—one system, one breath. He wonders if somehow the air John is taking in is the same breath that he himself is breathing out. The biologist in the back of his head rebels at the idea, but the romantic quite likes it.

There is stirring in the bedroom and then Brian is stepping out, rumpled and rubbing at his eyes with the heel of a palm like always. It never fails to make him smile; makes him smile now, that their lover for all his brains and studiousness still suffers mornings with an awkward lack of grace. He’s perfectly buttoned every other moment. Only they’re allowed to see this.

“Hi, baby,” John murmurs in greeting, voice warm and quiet enough that Roger isn’t sure Brian even heard. He’s forced to free one of his hands from Roger’s when Brian gives up on standing up straight for a moment in favor of just draping himself over the two of them.

“See, this is why we don’t stay up so late worrying about nothing,” Roger chides. He raises his mug to Brian’s face and is a little proud of him when he manages to take a sip without taking the thing or spilling any. His face screws up at the taste and Roger laughs. “We’re out of milk.”

“Moon was out,” Brian mutters.

“What?”

“Last night.”

“Is that why you were up all night? You’re nocturnal.”

“You’re a biologist,” comes the tired rebuttal. Roger raises his eyebrows when Brian fails to elaborate. “Humans can’t be nocturnal,” he clarifies, which helpfully clarifies little.

“Rules are made to be broken, apparently,” John says dryly.

“Not by you,” Brian says.

“No, not by me. I’m not much good without any sleep, am I? I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“You said that already,” Brian says, then yawns. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not. It upset you. It kept you up.”

“The moon kept me up, too. Are you going to apologize for the moon?”

“I can’t apologize for the moon. Besides, you don’t want an apology from the moon.”

“I don’t want an apology from you, either. I don’t need one.”

Roger sighs, trapped between them. They can practice logical reasoning until the cows come home. That’s their flaw in this system, too wrapped up in their heads to focus on their hearts.

Good thing he’s here. Good thing someone in this apartment took it upon themselves to study biology.

“I love you guys,” he announces. “I love the three of you more than I’ve ever loved anyone.”

They both go quiet.

He shrugs. “I just wanted you to know.”

They’re silent at that, and Roger looks up to see them looking at each other. It seems to have slapped Brian awake somehow. “I love you too,” he says. “Both of you.”

“Love you, Rog,” John murmurs. “You too, Bri. I don’t say it enough.”

“It’s alright,” Brian says, but John shakes his head.

“I’ll get better. Let me start right now.”

Roger rolls his eyes fondly at the two of them as he frees himself from John’s arms and pads quietly to the bedroom door. That’s all they need, half the time. They get so wrapped up in the logic of everything that they forget about the feelings behind it. They get so wrapped up in their brains they forget about their hearts.

That’s how you restart a heartbeat. A few nudges and a quick shock.

He pushes through the door, and there’s the real lover of the three of them dozing gently between the sheets. When Roger flops down next to him unceremoniously Freddie stirs before grunting, not bothering to open his eyes.

“Are they making nice?” he mumbles.

“Very nice,” Roger purrs suggestively, and Freddie giggles.

“And they didn’t invite us?”

“You have to be awake to get an invite, I’m afraid.”

“Well, that’s awfully unfair,” Freddie chides. “Maybe we should just have our own party without them.”

“How devious. They’ll be awfully jealous.”

“I suppose that depends on the kind of party,” he murmurs, and props himself up closer to Roger’s face until their noses are almost brushing. “What would you like to do first?”

A million thoughts come to mind—sinful things, sweet things, unspeakable things. There are a thousand things they’ve done and a thousand things they have yet to try, but only one pops into Roger’s head: the memory of yesterday, his head pounding as he tried to sleep off another hangover from another trip to the bar alone, trying to drink away the lingering uneasiness that came from paying for classes he doesn’t care about. The headache was only made worse by the tinkling of piano keys and Freddie’s voice, usually so sweet to his ears.

Brian and John have some making up to do. That doesn’t mean he and Freddie don’t, too.

“That song yesterday,” he whispers into the air between them, and Freddie’s eyes brighten. “What was it?”

“You want to hear it? It isn’t very happy,” he says doubtfully.

“I want to. I always want to.”

Freddie’s smile is shy then in a way Roger rarely sees anymore. It reminds him of the very beginning: a bit too honest and a little too scared, but _happy_.

“ _Love of my life, you’ve hurt me,”_ Freddie starts quietly but smiles softly as he does, and Roger runs a thumb along his cheek.

Outside in the kitchen he can hear the muted hum of low voices and a sniffle that sounds distinctly like John. It hurts in a way he isn’t quite prepared for but it feels _good_ , like exposing a sunburn to the cold. He feels raw around the edges in a way that makes him achingly aware of his own existence, and it feels wonderful.

They make him alive—all three of them make him work hard for it. And that’s exhilarating, that rush. It keeps him moving, keeps him breathing and feeling and living and loving and it’s so genuine it takes his breath away until one of them comes and breathes the air back into his lungs again.

_(“Keep yourself alive, keep yourself alive,”_ Freddie sings in the morning absently sometimes while brushing his hair in front of the mirror one morning, and Roger has to work not to smile like an idiot while he bowls him over with an over-eager kiss.)

He could cry from how much he loves them sometimes.

“It’s beautiful,” he whispers when Freddie pauses after a long wavering note. “I’m sorry you had to write it, though.”

“Oh, don’t be,” Freddie shushes him. “It isn’t about you three. Not all our songs are. It’s more about a feeling than anything.”

Roger watches him. He isn’t sure he’s convinced of that, but if it’s the story Freddie is sticking with there’s no arguing. “I’m sorry anyway,” he tries uncertainly.

Freddie is silent for a beat as Roger traces his cheekbone again. “It rains in paradise, you know,” he says eventually, “and the prettiest roses always have thorns.”

“You can take them off. All the good florists do.”

And he grins then, sunny and warm with all his teeth showing. “Now, darling,” he says teasingly. “What would be the fun in that?”

 

(Exhausted from anger, head spinning in a room of smoke and lungs full of the sweetness of it, he turns the mess of them over in his head like an engine heating up. Sweetness in his lungs, yes, but a bitter bile that comes from hurting his loved ones, too. And love. That’s the sweetest of all.

John’s jaw looks very sharp from this angle and his thighs are soft under Roger’s head. He reaches up to trace his chin but then gets distracted by the smoke in the air and tries to touch that until Freddie takes his hand, turning it to examine the scrapes on his palm.

“You should really be more careful,” he tells him. “We need your hands, you know.”

“Kinky,” he replies.

Above him John snorts and lights the bowl again. Brian watches him do it, trapped beneath Roger’s legs like he is, but Roger knows he doesn’t mind. He never smokes with them but for whatever reason is drawn to the smell, or maybe it’s the fact that they always end up piled on the couch like this that always has him joining them, commandeering most of the bottle of wine Freddie always has on the coffee table as he goes.

His curls remind Roger of the smoke. He frees his hand from Freddie’s to touch one but Brian catches his palm this time instead, tracing over it feather-light.

“You shouldn’t hurt yourself,” he says quietly.

“None of us should.”

“What’s that mean?”

“We shouldn’t hurt ourselves,” he clarifies. “Or each other. We hurt ourselves by hurting each other. We hurt each other by hurting ourselves. We’re all the same person,” he says finally, and feels like the door to enlightenment has just swung open on its hinges. “We’re one person.”

Brian looks at him like he’s grown a second head.

“Complementary,” John says, then coughs pitifully a few times.

Freddie snickers.

“The same,” Roger insists. Freddie is fully swept up into a case of the giggles now, but Brian at least is still paying attention. “No. Different parts but the same. Like a—like a body.”

“A body,” Brian repeats.

“Yeah. Yeah. Freddie is—” Freddie looks at him with warm eyes, giggles infectious to the point Roger starts giggling too, “—Freddie, you are the blood. You’re passion.”

Freddie blows him a kiss.

“And John is the lungs, because you can’t live without them but you don’t think about it until you can’t breathe anymore and that’s what happens when John isn’t there—”

“Thanks,” John says dryly.

“You’re losing me,” Brian adds.

“And Brian, you’re the brain because you’re overthinking this!” He cackles then. “And brain and Brian sound the same!”

“Does that make you the dick?” John asks.

Roger squawks. “I’m the heart!”

“Why do you get to be the heart?”

“Because I keep the beat!”

“By that logic Freddie should be the voice.”

“I want to be the dick,” Freddie mutters petulantly.

“I’m the heart,” Roger explains, “because sometimes I get angry and I beat too hard but I’m never angry at you. I could never be. I love all three of you and that’s why I keep beating. Because we love each other.”

He rolls until he can nose at John’s stomach and John goes suddenly stiff beneath him, eyes wide. Roger watches him turn to look at Brian slowly. Their eyes meet and something passes between them. Roger loves them the most in moments like this, when they seem to be able to read each other in the blink of an eye. For all their misunderstandings they have shocking moments of clarity like this. They’re perfectly matched—they’re soulmates. All four of them are, even if Roger seems to be the only one who understands that. _Figure it out_ , he thinks. _Please, let them figure it out._

Then he catches Freddie’s eye and gets a small, secretive smile in return, and he thinks he gets it.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little different from the others but hopefully you guys don't mind. i thought about making it a little more abstract and metaphoric like John's, but then I figured Roger has never really been one for that sort of thing anyway. He seems to generally like things a little more concrete, so that's how this one came out.
> 
> Some stuff before I forget (who are we kidding, I’m going to forget something anyway):
> 
> Would anyone be terribly upset if the rating of this changes a bit? Nothing drastic, just a maybe-slightly-more-teen teen rating? Freddie’s chapter is coming, after all. 
> 
> I also have another fic in the works and I don’t know if anyone is interested but it’s a Tangled au with enough twists that it’s still interesting, cause I love that movie but am I going to write a carbon copy of it? Hell no. What’s the fun in that? We gotta keep it fun and fresh. Anyway that’s OT4 too and if anyone is into it as a concept please let me know. I’m officially on winter break and will have plenty of time to work on it (hopefully—I have a little research to do too (anyone have any guitar building tips?)) and finish this bad boy up, so that’s that on that.
> 
> I’m very tired thank you for sticking with this shitshow


	4. Freddie

Ask him what they all mean to him and he’ll probably laugh—not because it’s particularly funny, but because the concept of asking such a simple question with the expectation of getting an equally simple answer is ridiculous to him. He can’t put such things into words.

And he has words. He has hundreds of thousands piling on top of each other in the margins of his schoolbooks and the notebook he reserves for such things, annotated neatly with Brian’s elegantly sloping but barely legible script. He has words that weave in and out of John’s basslines and patter along to Roger’s rhythms only to be mirrored by his voice, rough and strong. He has words to say it but no melody and handful of lyrics ever seems to come close. He has a feeling his entire body of work never will—not his songs, not his poetry, not even his paintings. Nothing will quite convey it.

So yes, it is a ridiculous question.

And he’s been asked before, time and time again. People want to know exactly how he can love three people at once, and three who are so different at that. It gets posed to him all the time: by friends, by family, even by the bolder colleague or more confused bar patron. He knows many of them are waiting for it all to fray at the edges and fall apart, if not for their own personal gain then for the right to gloat.

(“Queen,” a colleague says next to him at the bar, tone patronizing.

“Pardon?” Freddie asks politely.

“That’s what the four of you call yourselves, no? This band-turned-fuckbuddy thing you have going on?”

Freddie raises his eyebrows as he takes a slow sip of beer. It’s one of his favorites, and he takes his time swallowing it, too. Let this asshole wait. “We’re a bit past fuckbuddies, darling,” he says finally.

“I’m sure,” the guy says. He eyes Freddie’s neck appraisingly, and Freddie has to tamp down the urge to cover the bruise he knows John left under his jaw early that morning. “I wouldn’t imagine you’re off the market though, now would I?”

“What does that mean?” Freddie asks him sharply.

“Come on,” he says. He spares a glance to where Brian and John are sitting across the room, heads bent low as they argue heatedly. Freddie knows them well enough to read the heat in their eyes and the way their ankles are tangled together under the table; whatever inconsequential thing they’re fighting about is just foreplay to them at this point. Trust his companion not to understand that; he gestures to them with a raised glass and a cocky smirk. “How long can that last?”

Freddie doesn’t get to answer. A mug of beer lands next to him with a heavy thunk and two elbows abruptly follow. “Hi, babe,” Roger says breezily, eyes hard. “This guy bothering you?”

“Which one are you, then?” the man at the bar sneers. “Scary Spice?”

Freddie can read Roger’s next move before he even makes it, and he catches his wrist in a hard grip. “If you get us kicked out of this bar I’m not blowing you later,” he mutters.

Roger’s jaw twitches. He stares the other man down for a long moment before his eyes flick to Freddie’s and he nods once. Freddie lets out a breath and releases his wrist lightly, trailing it across his palm before letting go. Roger turns warily to face the bartender and for one blissful moment it really seems that the situation has resolved itself.

The man finishes his drink in one long sip before turning to Freddie again. “If you need three guys then it’s clear none of them are doing you right,” he says in an undertone. “When you get bored come ring me up and you can blow me inst—”

He’s cut off by a fist colliding brutally with his jaw and sending him knocking over barstools as he crashes to the floor. Roger doesn’t break his stride as he shakes his fist out before straddling the man’s chest and—)

They aren’t allowed in that bar anymore.

That’s Roger though, and the fire that rages in him when he’s pushed just a bit too far. It’s as powerful as it is dangerous, his passion for everything he does that can turn into an inferno so quickly. Love can be twisted cruelly into jealousy, caution into defensiveness, anger into a blind fury that frightens even him. He can burn bright and white-hot, and Freddie loves him for his passion as much as he loves him for his increasing ability to control it when it flares that destructively. He’s getting better.

And when he’s not burning he’s _warm_.

When he’s not burning he’s sun on skin on a perfect summer day, leaves playing in the light and casting it dappled and golden onto the grass—he’s like that here, eyes bright and skin glowing against the white of the sheets, peering at him sideways over the pillows with a hint of a smile curling his lips. He’s like that now, leaning close for a sweet kiss. He’s not the burning heat but the playful flicker, the warm caress.

“You’re the rose,” he murmurs against Freddie’s mouth with a smile. “Just as pretty as one, anyway.”

It makes Freddie huff a soft laugh. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. No, prettier.”

Freddie smiles at him half-incredulously and Roger looks back with bright, happy eyes. _If I am a rose you’re the sun on my leaves,_ he thinks. He’s too shy to say it but tucks the thought away carefully, keeps it close to his heart as the truth it is.

Freddie could bask in him always.

That’s the heart of him though, or one of them—because he has many different facets and depths just like John and Brian do, and Freddie isn’t nearly naïve enough to believe he has each of his lovers pegged as one thing when they surprise him every day. That’s the only thing he can be sure of: that they change like the weather but are always reliable in their predictability.

He settles into Roger’s space as he strains to listen to the sounds coming from the kitchen. The murmurs are barely even audible, but finally he hears a sniffle and then John’s voice rises briefly. “It’s _not_ ,” he says before settling into the same soft murmur as before.

Freddie tries to pick up Brian’s response but all he can hear is the decibel change as he replies—the smoothness of his voice, gentle lilt without a hint of damage that smoking can cause. He’s always found his voice soothing.

 _Still waters run deep,_ he’d murmured into Freddie’s ear once in the dead of night, and Freddie had taken it to heart.

It’d been said as the warm hazel of Brian’s eyes had been trained on the barely-visible shadows of John’s sleeping face in the darkness of the room, half-buried in Roger’s hair. He hadn’t seemed to fit the saying then, the deepest thoughts running through his head probably the nonsensical dreams of the overstressed and altogether exhausted.

He’d seemed the part earlier that day though, walking along the banks of the Thames with a downturn to his mouth and an unspoken feeling churning in his dark depths. His eyes had matched the water too, stormy grey mirroring stormy grey, but no. That’s not right. John is saltwater if he’s anything, not the choked fresh water of the river. He’s boundless and deep, teeming with life and hiding mysteries in his abyss.

“Darling,” Freddie had murmured. “Talk to me.”

John, forever still and utterly impassive, had shrugged. His eyes scanned the banks not in search but simply for something to do; he does that sometimes, avoids looking at Freddie as if his eyes are clear pools at the bottom of which lie all his deepest thoughts; as if he isn’t anything but the deepest, greyest sea.

“John,” Freddie whispered, catching his wrist.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he whispered back, tugging his wrist gently away. “I don’t think you really want to hear it.”

“I always want to hear what’s on your mind.”

But he’d turned his whole head away then, soft brown hair concealing his profile. He’d stopped walking and looked instead to land: to the city, the buildings and sprawling gardens. He’d looked to the sky, let the wind play through his hair as he watched the clouds. Those were grey that day too, an echo of what was to come: not rain or crashing waves, but a night without stars.

“Tell me,” Freddie implored one last time.

His eyes flicked as he watches the clouds. “Brian found out,” he said as if he’d been commenting on the weather.

Freddie frowned. “What?”

“He knows. He knows I’m in love with Roger.”

The air froze abruptly in Freddie’s lungs. He remembers the feeling, the sting of it.

John laughed, brittle. “He gave me his blessing.”

“That’s,” he started. “That’s good. That’s great! You should ask Roger out. He’ll be so happy. He loves you too, you know.”

John looked at him finally, eyes unreadable as always. “I can’t. You know why.”

And the air went cold again, because Freddie did know. He’d always known, deep in his heart. Brian was in love with Roger too. It was obvious to everyone: obvious in his lingering glances, his gentle smiles and the way he tensed whenever Roger graced him with a friendly touch. He’d been in love since before either John or Freddie came along and had pined his way through more of Roger’s flings and exes than John and Freddie even knew about. For John to start something with Roger would be for him to hurt Brian irreparably and further confuse the web of feelings that knots the four of them together. That’s another thing John knows, after all: Freddie is unconditionally in love with Roger as well.

John probably wasn’t aware on that day that Freddie was in love with him, too.

The idea of John and Roger finally confessing their feelings gave him a thrill of happiness for his friends and a horrible ache of loss over his own missed opportunities. He’d wanted them both horribly and couldn’t pick either, and if not for John’s hesitation his own would have had him lose them both. There on the banks of the Thames, watching the grey of the river reflected in John’s eyes, he’d felt like it had already happened. He’d felt like the world was spinning on dizzyingly around him and he was stuck there, watching his friends live their lives while he longed helplessly for all of them. He’d felt like he’d already lost.

But that’s a different story.

The truth shines through now and John’s sea is a little more clear these days, or at least it is to them. When he comes into the bedroom finally his cheeks are wet with saltwater but he’s smiling, giddy and kiss-flushed and pulling Brian behind himself.

“Are you alright, doll?” Roger asks him, voice stupidly warm and happy, and Brian grins when John laughs wetly.

“I’m alright,” he says, flopping down next to the two of them and dragging Brian with him. “We’re alright,” he adds more quietly.

His tears taste like the sea when Freddie kisses them away.

He can feel Brian tracing a hand down his back, reverent and light as the air around them. That’s him, gentle and soft-spoken when perhaps he shouldn’t be, when perhaps his secrets should be shared into the air around them. If still waters run deep then still skies run even deeper.

Because that’s what Brian is, really: the air that ties everything together and yet can blow so harsh and chaotic. He can be the joyous clear blue or the endless black, the stars that are barely visible in the city. Sometimes the bright spots are harder to find. Other times they shine through more clearly, like neon in the dead of the night.

Freddie’s always liked neon. It lines the way home.

He watched it reflected in shop windows, almost blindingly colorful but not nearly as shiny as the man at his side, his own personal sun drooping at the edges like a Dali painting. Roger was in top shape that night, or so he thought. He was under the impression that he could swallow London whole and then make a significant go at the rest of the world, too. In reality he was barely able to walk without Freddie’s aid, not that Freddie was brave enough to point that out.

“The lights are fading,” Roger slurred in his arms.

Freddie tried to shake off a wave of alarm. “No, darling,” he’d said as calmly as he could. “Open your eyes.”

“They are open. I’m telling you. It’s all black.”

That couldn’t be good. He turned Roger around in his arms, examining his eyes: brilliant blue and a little glassy from drinking but overall the same as usual.

Roger blinked back.

“Can you see me?” Freddie asked him hesitantly.

Those pretty eyes rolled dramatically. “Freddie, I’m _fine_ ,” he says. “Look! The lights are out!”

Freddie followed his pointed finger; sure enough the lights on the way down the street to their flat were all blown, leaving it dark. “It’s just up ahead,” he said. “Stay close, okay? We’ll be fine.”

“I _am_ close. Look how close I am, Fred!” Roger complained, but Freddie was too focused on their footwork to notice.

A short laugh echoed out from the stoop of their building. “That’s not something I’d expect you to be moaning in the street.”

It was John, face lit by the cherry of a cigarette he was smoking as he sat on the concrete steps up to their building. It flared bright when he took a drag and then Roger was making grabby hands for it, letting go of Freddie’s shoulder to take it between his fingers.

“The power went out about an hour ago,” John said to Freddie, watching warily as Roger sways slightly before leaning back against the wall and blowing out a stream of smoke that’s barely visible in the dark. “It’s going to be fucking freezing in there tonight. They’re saying snow.”

“I suppose it’s a good thing we finally got that new bed,” Freddie said, then mentally kicked himself for insinuating such a thing. “I mean—sorry, darling. I didn’t mean anything by that. We know you aren’t ready and—"

“Oh, stop apologizing,” John said as he rolled his eyes. “Anyway, it’s a good thing we haven’t gotten that electric stove yet. We’ve still got a way to make hot tea. We’ll need it after all this, I’m sure. I’m gonna go put the kettle on. I’ll take Roger up, too.”

Roger pouted. “Why me?”

“Freddie needs to go fetch the other one, love. You’ll catch your death out here.”

Roger muttered something petulantly under his breath before putting the cigarette out against the bricks behind him. Sparks flared hot and bright, briefly illuminating his fingers in a burst of orange-red before tumbling to the pavement and flickering out again. Roger followed John through the door, and all at once Freddie was alone again.

Well, not quite alone. He turned and looked out to the street, and only then did he see him: Brian, sitting down in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes trained on the heavens above. He grinned when Freddie made his way over.

“Are you drunk?” Freddie asked warily.

“Drunk? No, just happy.”

“Oh. I am.”

“Happy?”

“Drunk.” He sat down and followed his gaze upward. With the lack of light around them and the air cold and clear the stars were brighter than Freddie had seen them since coming to London. It was almost dizzying to look at. “They don’t make you lonely?”

Brian looked at him then. “The stars?”

“Yeah.”

He swallowed and looks up again. “No,” he says after a beat. “I’ve never really understood when people say that. People get lonely when they think about our planet spinning through all that,” and he gestures at the stars broadly, “but we’re really part of this great herd. Everything is spinning in unity. It’s all mapped out with math and science and physics. It’s one great cosmic symphony. Humans are the ones who squabble and push each other away. We manage to feel alone even in crowded cities. I think the stars must look down at us and feel horribly lonely just out of sympathy.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve ruined your mood,” Freddie started, but Brian waved him off.

“Don’t be. I’m happy, Fred. I’m not lonely. I have the three of you.”

A cold wind had blown through London even as Brian shot him a sunny smile, and Freddie was hit suddenly with the feeling that he had never known him as closely as he did then. His mood was as changeable as the wind back then, as the newness of the four of them together settled slowly over their shoulders into something comfortable and well-worn. He was ever shifting with their future, flitting between all three of them, sometimes warm and sometimes horribly cold.

He never forgot to look up, though. Brian, for all his darkness and melancholy, never quite stopped looking for the bright things in life. Drifting above the city yet not quite able to reach the stars he’d always strived toward the brightness on either side, sometimes against his own better judgement. Freddie was thankful that he did, though—is still thankful. It’s one of the things he loves most about him. In those bright moments he’s brilliant yet soft, the breath tracing Freddie’s surfaces and ruffling his leaves, just like John is the violent sea lapping gently at his shore and Roger is the light that plays, the glow that warms.

He sees the three of them everywhere.

He sees John in the rain that comes down in fall, feels it like a kiss when it falls against his cheeks. He sees him in neon lights reflected in puddles and the moisture on the mirror when he comes out of the shower. Far away at his parents’ house when he’s missing him the most he traces the water rings on the table that the glasses leave and thinks of John, cool and clear and quietly chaotic.

He feels Roger between his fingertips as his cigarettes burn down, unsmoked while he daydreams. He feels him in summer when the sun pokes its heads out from the clouds. He feels him physically, a warm weight on his chest when he falls asleep too soon. He feels him by touch, hot lips against his, feels the heat of his demanding fingers, feels the rhythm of his blood pound frenzied and overheated and hears his own heartbeat in his ears.

And Brian. He sees Brian every time he looks up at the sky and sees the stars looking back, the galaxy dark and deep and lonely before him. He feels like he could fall upward into the sky sometimes and land in its diamond abyss, and he feels like he could fall into Brian constantly—oh, but Brian would cushion him with a breeze beneath his wings and cherish him, blanket him in his clouds and never let him go. Brian would fly with him as the heat of the sun warmed them from above and the sea stretched endlessly below.

John, sprawled below Roger, lets out a breathless laugh and arches into the warmth of his hands.

Fuck falling. Freddie has been falling constantly since the day he met them, but he thinks flying is more an apt word. He’s flying now, and when he turns his head there’s Brian soaring at his side with a giddy smile.

“I love you,” Brian says into his neck, breath tickling his skin like a breeze, and Freddie smiles and pulls him closer into the middle of the bed, into the orbit of this little space they’ve carved for themselves. “I’ve always loved you, since the beginning.”

“I loved you first,” Freddie says with a grin, because if there’s one thing he’s familiar with it’s Brian’s well-hidden competitive streak.

True to form, Brian shakes his head. “Not true,” he says, eyes full of stars and fingers quick and knowing.

“Are you calling me a liar?” Freddie asks. He hears John laughing again and glances over to meet his eyes. John looks back, bright and happy, sunlight playing off the waves. Roger is trying to hide his smile in his neck and utterly failing, and it makes Freddie laugh too before he turns back to Brian. “I wouldn’t lie to you like that, darling. Perish the thought.”

“Yeah?” Brian replies. “Prove it.”

Freddie grins, and does.

Ask him what they mean to him. Ask him to put it all into words: the feel of their touch, the weight of their looks, the way they move around each other. Ask him to summarize every word of love and every single fight, all the angry nights spent on the couch and lazy mornings spent in bed, long afternoons spent daydreaming in class and even longer evenings trying not to let it slip exactly how much his friends mean to him. Ask him to put into words the rush of feelings when it finally all slotted into place. At the end of the day, what are they?

They’re his everything.

At the end of the day, they’re the air in his lungs and the ground beneath his feet. They’re in the beauty around him and the reason to keep looking for more of it; the feeling of tears pricking the back of his eyes, the feeling of laughter bubbling in his chest. They’re his whole world, and he wouldn’t give up a single part of it.

Things aren’t perfect. It hasn’t all been fixed, and even if it were they’re bound to make the same mistakes again. They have a tendency not to learn from their previous arguments.

None of it matters, though. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things and it certainly doesn’t matter here and now, with the easy contentment that comes with being surrounded by the three of them. That’s what love is: loud enough to drown out all the background chatter and twice as sweet. Something you can’t quite describe with words, even when they’re sung.

It’s real, though. It’s strong.

He lets it wash him away as he falls into them. He lets it swallow him up, the feeling of all four of them together. From the very first touch, despite everything, all is right in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna write smut in this but then I accidentally started writing a separate smut and it’s ot4 so naturally it’s already like 10k and not even halfway done. So I guess that’s being published soon. There are also a few other things in the works for this verse because I don’t know how to stop myself a;lskfjsd;lkfjslkdfjslkd happy holidays and let me know what you think!


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